


Dull, James

by jimmytiberius



Category: Sherlock (TV), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Bondlock, Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-17
Updated: 2013-01-17
Packaged: 2017-11-25 21:15:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/643020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jimmytiberius/pseuds/jimmytiberius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a brief bit of Bondlock, starring John Watson as James Bond and Sherlock Holmes as Q. Q's being targeted by terrorists, Bond is assigned to protect him. It goes exactly where you think it will, and fairly quickly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dull, James

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Sherlock Secret Santa 2012 for tumblr user Infinisea using her Bondlock headcanon. Figured I'd post it here, what the hell.

            When Bond walks back into 221B, Q is on the couch, exactly where he was when Bond left. It’s the same position he’s been in since M placed them in this safehouse the day before. He isn’t asleep, or at least Bond doesn’t think so. Just thinking. M warned him in the briefing that his little brother has a tendency to go silent for days, when he’s trying to solve a particularly difficult problem. So far it’s been fine with Bond. Protecting someone who doesn’t move or speak is relatively easy.

            He’s gotten so complacent in the past 24 hours, in fact, that when Q finally rolls over to face him he nearly drops the mug of tea in his hand. Q fixes him with a fierce stare, runs his hands through his dark curls, then ruffles them madly as though trying to will a thought out of his head. Then the skinny young man swings his socked feet to the floor, sits up, and proclaims, “Bored!”

            “Sorry?” Bond sets down his tea in case of further outbursts.

            “You heard me.” Q frowns. “I’m bored. No computers, nothing they could track me by, it’s all dreadfully dull. I need something to occupy me.”

            Bond raises one eyebrow. “I thought you were trying to figure out who’s trying to kill you.”

            Q makes a derisive sound in his throat. “Oh, it’s obvious Moriarty and SPECTRE are behind it. The difficult thing is actually tracking them, which I can’t do without my equipment at work. This going-into-hiding business is really not productive.”

            “Well, productive or not, your brother isn’t taking any chances.” Bond was with M when he found out that an assassin had very nearly managed to kill his little brother, and the look in his face was not one that Bond would forget any time soon. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen the usually inscrutable M look so ruffled. Moneypenny, though, was calm and superior as ever, even when facing the frantic orders of her boss. She carried on texting as usual without sparing even a glance for Bond. He knows that’s never going to happen (he’s asked enough times) but she could at least be polite.

            Q scowls. “I’m perfectly capable of protecting myself. It was obvious immediately that someone had entered my flat. Only an idiot would have missed the signs.”

            “Well, then,” Bond says exasperatedly, “why did you go in anyway?”             

            “I had to get my violin.” By the look on Q’s face, this also should have been obvious immediately. Other than the last silent 24 hours, Bond has only ever interacted with the new quartermaster briefly and professionally, and he’s beginning to realise exactly where Q’s reputation as incorrigible must come from. It’s too bad, really. He’s awfully pretty.

            “Ah, of course, your violin.” Bond wisely chooses not to pursue the issue and turns back to his tea, which has cooled considerably in the interim. He takes a sip anyway; perfectly good tea should never go to waste. Even if it’s lukewarm. A thought suddenly occurs to him, and he turns back to Q. “Have you eaten since we got here?”

            “Eating’s dull.” Q flops back down on the sofa and steeples his hands under his chin.

            “So is that a no, then?”

            Q closes his eyes. “Is it really your problem, 007?”

            “I’m supposed to keep you alive.” Bond adds more water to the kettle and begins assembling a second cup of tea. “That includes staving off starvation.”

            “I’m not hungry.”

            “You haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

            “So?”

            “So, if years of fieldwork have taught me anything – ” Bond pulls a serviceable-looking loaf of bread out of a cupboard and pops two slices in the toaster – “it’s eat when you can.”

            Q doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t argue. Bond takes that as success and pours hot water into the second mug. As the tea steeps, he briefly debates whether Q takes sugar or not, then glances at the man lying across the furniture like a teenager and decides that he probably does. Not that he really cares. He’d rather force-feed Q than risk M’s wrath if he brings him back to MI6 in anything less than pristine condition.

            When the tea and toast are ready, Q has returned to his meditative state, eyes closed and apparently oblivious to the world. So Bond sets the plate and mug down on the floor next to the sofa and (after double-checking that the front door is armed) heads upstairs to do surveillance on any possible posts for snipers on the surrounding buildings. When he comes back down, Q doesn’t appear to have moved at all, but the tea has diminished a bit and one of the two slices of toast is gone. Bond rolls his eyes, but smiles a bit in spite of himself.

 

~

 

            That night Q doesn’t sleep at all. He stays up the whole night tapping away at the tiny laptop that MI6 has issued Bond to use to keep in contact. Bond, who can’t even type properly, can hardly imagine what the hell the man is up to or whether he’s even allowed to be doing it. At one point, he says pointedly, “If anything you’re doing there is going to betray our location to Moriarty, M will have my head.” But Q just smirks and carries on doing whatever he’s doing so there’s really no point.

            Around two in the morning, Bond decides that staying up all night for no reason is silly and goes to bed. He has no idea what might happen in the next few days; like eating, sleeping is something that should be done whenever possible when on assignment. It’s hardly been two hours when he’s awakened suddenly by what sounds like a banshee being tortured. He stumbles out of the upstairs bedroom and down into the living room, gun drawn, to find that Q is standing by the rear windows, scraping his violin bow against the strings of the instrument with no regard to tune or technique.

            “What the hell are you doing?” Bond lowers his gun but not his attitude. Q looks a disaster; his hair is sticking out in all directions and his dressing gown is falling off of one shoulder, revealing a large amount of creamy skin. He waves the bow and shouts at Bond,

            “BORED!”

            “Right, I’m sorry you haven’t got much to do, but honestly, Q.” Bond gestures with his gun for emphasis, which he knows he shouldn’t do, but he’s just been woken when there is absolutely no danger and that makes him crabby. “Put that damn thing away and go to sleep.”

            “Sleep is dull.”

            “I’m sure it is for you. But some of us happen to enjoy it.” Especially when your brother could order us to do anything or go anywhere tomorrow if it would protect you and then who the hell knows when the next time I get to sleep will be, Bond doesn’t say. Q knows exactly how overprotective M is; that’s the main issue here.

            Q lowers the violin and suddenly lights up as if he’s got an idea. Bond sincerely hopes he hasn’t. “Can I watch you sleep?”

            “What?” Of all the things, that’s not what Bond was expecting.

            “I don’t have a control, so it wouldn’t be experimentally sound until I could get one, but it would be a start.” Q’s words are getting quicker as he gets more excited. “You’ve been a double-0 agent for what, nineteen years?”

            Bond stares. “Twenty next March. Have you been looking at my personnel file?”

            “Never mind that. Your sleeping habits must be fascinating after all that time. Much like a military man, only I imagine even more heightened. How does it affect your REM cycles, I wonder? What sort of stimuli do you perceive as dangerous enough to wake you up and what don’t you? Do you – ”

            “Look,” Bond interrupts. “If I let you do that, will you put the violin away and quit complaining?”

            “Oh, undoubtedly.” Q beams.

            “Fine. But no waking me up just to see what happens, or anything like that. I wake up on my own at oh-six hundred unless anything happens and I’d like to actually sleep until then, please.”

            “I wouldn’t disturb you.” The thought is apparently horrifying. “That would ruin the experiment.”

            “All right, then.” Bond waits for Q to put his violin away, then heads back up to the bedroom he’s claimed. Laying his gun (with the safety on) under his pillow, he stretches back out, not surprised when Q does the same on the other side of the bed, laptop open on his stomach. “Good night, Q.” Bond rolls over and falls into his usual light sleep again immediately, telling himself that he’s not at all fazed by the fact that the warm body next to him isn’t the usual sort.

 

~

 

            The next day even Bond is bored. Usually his cases involve some kind of action; this is more like babysitting. Q is still in bed, apparently writing some sort of analysis of his observations, as Bond throws together a sandwich for his lunch. He reclaims the laptop long enough to shoot off a short report to M, which feels more like a diary entry or a blog post than a proper mission report – all he has to say is that, essentially, nothing has happened. He has to stop himself from coming across as whiny about it. Neither Bond nor Q is a man made for hiding in a safehouse in the middle of London, watching the world go by on Baker Street but unable to join it. Other than that brief grocery trip the previous day (MI6 neglected to supply them with milk), Bond hasn’t left 221B in 48 hours now, and Q’s stir-craziness has started to rub off on him. He decides to take a shower and have a wank. Maybe that’ll take the edge off things.

            He’s just starting to get a good rhythm going, dark curly hair and pale cheekbones flashing in his mind’s eye, when the door swings open and a voice comes from the other side of the shower curtain.

            “Do you usually masturbate when you’re on a case, or is it just because this one is particularly dull?” Q inquires.

            Bond lets go of his cock as if it’s on fire. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing! You can’t just walk in on a man when – I mean – I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he finishes lamely.

            “Don’t be ridiculous,” Q scoffs. “It was perfectly obvious what you were doing in there. From the way you’d been shifting in your chair, and once the water started running – ”

            “You know what?” Bond says hoarsely. “I really don’t want to know how you knew. You’re not documenting this. Get out.”

            “Oh, I wasn’t intending to document it. Not on an MI6 official computer, anyway.” Bond can hear rustling from where the other man is standing and it’s making him nervous. “But I’m as bored as you are, you know. One night’s sleep study isn’t occupying nearly enough of my attention to make a difference.” The shower curtain is swept suddenly to the side and Bond is greeted with the sight of a fully naked Q, all pale limbs and compact muscles and oh, that down there is really rather hard to ignore, isn’t it? “So I thought maybe I could help.”

            Bond opens his mouth to protest that M knows everything that goes on in these safehouses, that it would be against about a thousand regulations and that anyway he really isn’t actually gay (just oddly intrigued by the sight of another man naked), but then a heart-shaped mouth is nearly swallowing his cock and all he can think is that oh, this might make the remainder of the assignment a lot more interesting.


End file.
